When Consciousness Dawns: Confronting Homophobia With Turkish High School Students

Helping people think more deeply about social justice issues--the environment

, poverty, violence and conflict, race, class, gender, prejudice and discrimination, to name a few--has been my greatest challenge as a secondary and postsecondary educator in the United States and internationally. However, when it comes specifically to dealing with sexual identity, gender variance, and homophobia, I have floundered. In 1990, while teaching at Singapore American School, I handled so poorly students' treatment of one gay classmate that it pushed me to realize that if I were ever to successfully help students overcome their homophobia, I must first confront and deal with my own.

The work of many colleagues and writers has helped me tackle my homophobia and has shaped my thinking and Links Of London Jewelry practice regarding sexuality education, particularly Peggy Mclntosh and James Sears. Mcintosh's theories concerning "privilege" ("White") and "interactive phases of curricular revision" ("Interactive Phases of Curricular"; "Interactive Phases of Curricular and Personal") complement Sears's "critical sexuality curriculum." Both Mclntosh and Sears call for educators to examine their own histories, attitudes, and actions concerning a spectrum of social issues, including sexual identity.

In this article I describe a mini-unit I taught during the 2007--08 school year with a group of eleventh-grade International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme students in my English and Theory of Knowledge (TOK) courses at a private Turkish high school in Istanbul, Turkey. The program is designed for English as a Second Language students who perform at a high level. The English curriculum included units on poetry, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, Media and Culture, and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. The TOK curriculum involved exploring "ways of knowing" under the frameworks of language, reason, perception, and emotion. In this mini-unit I guided students as they explored homophobia, including a session in which I shared with them my process of coming to terms with my homophobia.

These students share similarities with teenagers the world over--concerns with appearance and popularity, friends and romance, being "cool" and fitting in. As a group they are, for the most part, diligent students, economically privileged, and aspiring to gain admission into the best universities in North America, Europe, and Turkey. Turkey is a secular state, and the families of these Links Of London Bracelets students are predominantly ardent supporters of secularism and value Westernized liberal education. However, Turkey is also a country struggling with the present and future role of religion in its society. The country, in the last three years, has seen its bid for European Union membership falter since members of a moderate Islamic party (AKP) assumed leadership in 2002. The tension can be seen in recent debates over whether or not women can choose to wear head scarves, a symbol of Islamic devotion, in public universities.

by: Scofield

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